When I began working at the museum I'm at now, I inherited a 2000 square
foot exhibit which had been about 50% completed over a three year period.  I
had 6 months to finish it.  One of the most enjoyable parts of this was
inviting a wheel-chair using member of the museum to tour the exhibit with
me to offer advice.

The woman who assisted me was a wonderful person...pleasant, helpful and
surprisingly to me, very practical in her approach.  Perhaps I was
unconciously acting on a stereotype, but my experience in the public sector
previously (County government)with ADA advisory councils had not been good.
I was expecting the "I don't care if it cost 4 times what your annual budget
is, you have to do such and such" (the "reasonable" part of reasonable
accomodation is often forgotten).  Her approach was "Let's see what we can
do reasonably to improve things"  Did we end up with a perfect exhibit? No.
But it is much better than it might otherwise have been, and I will include
her in the planning stages of any future exhibt work.

I think every museum needs to develop a relationship with such a person, to
help in exhibit design.  And I second the idea of having docents and
tourguides tour the museum in a wheelchair.  We also take our docents
through blindfolded and using a cane as we do many programs with the
visually impaired.

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